Still was sitting in the big hall at Red Rock on his return home, and he took out the notes and laid them on the table before his son.
“Ah! Dr. Wash,” he said, with a gleam in his eyes; “things is comin’ roun’. Now you’ve got it all your own way. With them cards in your hand if you can’t win the game, you ain’t as good a player as yer pappy. I don’t want nothin’ for myself, I just want ’em to know who I am—that’s all. And with you over yonder at the old Doctor’s, and Virgy in Congress or maybe even in the Governor’s house down yonder, I reckon they’ll begin to find out who Hiram Still is.”
The son was evidently pleased at the prospect spread out before him, and his countenance relaxed.
“‘Twon’t do to let Leech get too far ahead—I’m always telling you so.” Young Still was beginning to show some jealousy of Leech of late.
“Ahead? He ain’t ahead. He just thinks he is.” The speaker’s voice changed. “What’s the matter with Virgy these days? I’ve done set her up in the biggest house in the county, and brought the man who’s goin’ to be one of the biggest men in the State to want her to marry him, and she won’t have nothin’ to do with him. It clean beats my time. I don’t know what’s got into her. She ain’t never been the same since I brought her here. Looks like these pictures round here sort o’ freezes her up.”
As he glanced around Hiram Still looked as if he were freezing up a little himself.
“She’s a fool,” said the brother, amiably.
“I thought maybe she’s been kind o’ ailin’ an’ I’d git the old Doctor to come and see her. Say what you please, he have a kind o’ way with him women folks seems to like. But she won’t hear of it.”
“She’s just a fool. Let her alone for awhile, anyhow.”